Dicyclopentyldichlorosilane is widely used as a basic starting material having high activity in the production of other organosilicon compounds or compounds containing organosilicon groups.
Therefore, it has so far been attempted to produce the dicyclopentyldichlorosilane by the reaction between easily available starting materials, namely cyclopentene and dichlorosilane, and many studies on catalysts for this reaction have been done. However, all the catalysts which have so far been studied do not sufficiently drive the reaction, and so they cannot serve for the industrial use.
Such being the case, the production of said compound has been carried out by another method which uses trichlorosilane and cyclopentene as starting materials. According to this method, trichlorosilane and cyclopentene undergo addition reaction in the presence of a platinum and/or rhodium catalyst to produce cyclopentyltrichlorosilane as an intermediate, and then the intermediate is made to react with cyclopentylmagnesium chloride to give the intended compound. However, this method has a disadvantage in requiring two different reactors since it comprises two different types of reactions, namely addition reaction and Grignard reaction.
Thus, it is still a problem to be solved to produce useful dicyclopentyldichlorosilane by a one-step addition reaction alone.